The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
Here it is, it has arrived! A masterpiece that was originally a 2-shaku 7-sun katana likely bearing the mei of Horikawa Kunihiro, which became mumei after being unhesitatingly shortened in later generations. Because of this, the kiwame was lowered by one grade and attributed to his younger brother, Kuniyasu. According to the *Kunihiro Taikan*, there are fewer than 20 extant works by Kuniyasu, and among them, 1 is designated as Juyo Bunkazai, 5 as Juyo Bijutsuhin, and 12 as Juyo Token; they are all recognized as masterpieces. While Horikawa Kunihiro is immensely famous as the founder of Shinto, the works of his younger brother and daisaku-sha, Horikawa Kuniyasu, are few in number and are referred to as phantom masterpieces. Kuniyasu was the youngest brother of Horikawa Kunihiro. There is an anecdote that Kuniyasu’s swords were so skillfully made that his brother Kunihiro appealed to their lord, claiming Kuniyasu had forged a fake Masamune; Kuniyasu was subsequently placed in the custody of the Torii family—a story that proves just how great Kuniyasu’s skill was. However, the reality is that he was scouted and became the kakae-kaji (retained smith) for the Torii family. Most of Kuniyasu’s sword works bear the mei of his older brother, Horikawa Kunihiro. This katana has a Keicho Shinto sugata, with little difference between the moto-mihaba and saki-mihaba, a shallow sori, and an extended kissaki. The jigane is a zanguri-style itame-hada known as "Horikawa-hada," and the ji is well-covered in ji-nie. The hamon is a notare-midare mixed with gunome, aiming for the style of Shizu Saburo Kaneuji, with deep nie and nioi. Sunagashi is present, kinsuji appears, and with the addition of tobiyaki, it is forged with a wild and ambitious ha. It is a magnificent sword aiming for the style of Kaneuji, who is famous as a Soshu high-ranking smith and disciple of Masamune. The luxurious koshirae adds further splendor to this sword, which was lowered one grade from Horikawa Kunihiro due to being mumei and given the kiwame of his brother Kuniyasu. Since ancient times, works of the Horikawa school have been few and treated as precious items; please truly enjoy this masterpiece.
NihontoWatchmumei · Edo · nagasa 70.7cm · sori 1.6cm
Horikawa (Yamashiro / Kyoto) · Yamashiro · around 1596-1615
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 11%
1 piece on the market now
Horikawa Kuniyasu signed only the two characters of his name, never a court title, and within the whole Horikawa school he alone cut his file marks in reverse. These two habits, more than any single feature of forging or temper, are how the published sources tell him apart. The Tanaka genealogy gives his common name as Saburōdayū and records that he was the youngest brother of Horikawa Kunihiro; other sword books make him instead a nephew, originally from Obi in Hyūga, who admired Kunihiro, traveled up to Kyoto, entered his gate and there matured. He worked in the Keichō years, at the opening of the shintō age, and his record is one of the closest in the school to its founder.
The published sources return again and again to a single explanation for how few of his signed blades survive. His manner of forging, the construction of his tang, and the cut of his signature so closely resemble Kunihiro's that he is thought to have served as one of his daisaku, the substitute hand producing work under the master's name. The first-session Jūyō commentary puts it plainly: among signed blades that survive, those bearing Kunihiro's own signature yet judged on appraisal to be wholly Kuniyasu's hand are not few. He is, in effect, the daisaku whose work stands closest of all to Kunihiro's, and the small body of pieces signed Kuniyasu is what remains once the blades that went out under his brother's name are set aside.
His characteristic hand copies the higher Sōshū masters, and within them the Naoe-Shizu manner above all, what the commentaries call 「彼が最も得意とした志津風の作域」[[c:1]], the Shizu-style range in which he most excelled. The jigane is the constant. Over a board-grain itame mixed with mokume, and at times ō-itame, the grain stands up into a coarse, dry texture the published sources name the most conspicuously standing zanguri in the whole Horikawa group and a distinctive trait of this smith; fine ji-nie sets densely and rather thickly, chikei enter well, and on several blades a diagonal mizukage rises from below the machi. The carvings run to the devotional, futasuji-hi with bonji, rendai and kuwagata, suken, gomabashi and kurikara, executed in relief and harmonizing with the wide, forceful Keichō shape.
Over that jigane he tempers a shallow, large notare into which gunome, ko-gunome and angular, squared-off elements gather, ashi entering, the nioi deep and the nie thick. The nie is the point the published sources name as his recognition: at times it coarsens and gathers in uneven clusters, hotsure breaks along the edge, sunagashi runs broadly, long kinsuji enter, and small yubashiri and tobiyaki are mixed in, while the nioiguchi inclines to shizumi, a subdued, slightly sunken line the commentaries read as a mark of this group. The boshi enters in notare or midare and turns back in ko-maru or yakizume with vigorous hakikake. Against this bold, rustic prime stands a rare second register: on one Jūyō wakizashi he tempers instead a chū-suguha with places of shallow, small notare, the nie not coarsened as usual but composed quietly in ko-nie. The published sources call examples of his suguha rare, judge this one finished with consummate skill, and liken it to 「同派の平安城弘幸を想わせる」[[c:2]], the work of Heianjō Hiroyuki of the same line.
What singles him out in the school is not chiefly his style, which is by design close to his master's, but two technical habits the commentaries name as his great points of connoisseurship. He signs only the two characters Kuniyasu and never took a court title, 「銘字は必ず二字銘にきり, 受領銘はない」[[c:3]], the only one among the superior Horikawa smiths to receive no juryō. And alone in the school he cuts his file marks reverse, 「一門中, 鑢目が逆筋違」[[c:4]], said to be because he was left-handed, a feature the published sources note does not appear on the blades signed Kunihiro. The same commentaries connect his two-character work in both style and signature to Kunitsugu, transmitted as his elder brother, and observe that within the Horikawa group no one but Kuniyasu produced the kiriha-built Sadamune-style copies seen among his work. From the manner of his forging and temper they read him as one who took the orbit of Sadamune for his model, 「おそらく国広の代作に任じていたためと思われる」[[c:5]], and so served the master's name with his own hand.
For the collector he is a rare and rewarding name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, a katana held in the Tokyo National Museum, a wakizashi at the Tokubetsu-Jūyō rank, a prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin katana once owned by Jinbei Kashiwara of Osaka, and some fourteen Jūyō blades, one of them transmitted in the Shimazu family, lords of the Kagoshima domain. The published sources call his finest pieces masterworks that bear comparison with Kunihiro's own, one first-session blade praised as 「国広の傑作に比肩する出来映えで, 同作中傑出した一口である」[[c:6]], comparable in quality to Kunihiro's masterworks and outstanding among Kuniyasu's oeuvre. Because so few signed works exist, and because most designated blades are long held rather than traded, a signed Kuniyasu comes to light only seldom; a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, and it carries the added interest of a hand that, in the world at large, is hidden inside the signed work of Kunihiro himself.
Where Kuniyasu stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Shinto · Yamashiro
79 pieces on the market now
At Ichijo Horikawa in Kyoto, from Keicho 4 (1599), Horikawa Kunihiro gathered the pupils whose work the published sources name with his own as the opening of the shinto age. Kunihiro himself reached forging late and by a roundabout road. Born Tanaka and serving as a warrior under the Ito of Obi castle in Hyuga, he wandered the provinces after that house fell, forging where he stopped, his earliest dated blade cut in Hyuga in Tensho 4 (1576); his itinerant Tensho-uchi looked to late Soshu and late Seki, often run toward a hitatsura-like effect over devotional carving. The settlement in Kyoto changed that. There his stated aim, the sources write, lay in the revival of the Soshu-den tradition, the leaning strongest toward Shizu, and around that ideal he trained the men who carried his manner forward: Dewa no Kami Kunimichi, Kuniyasu, Osumi no Jo Masahiro, Echigo no Kami Kunitomo, the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke, with later and minor hands reaching Settsu, Echizen and Edo. Many of them, born like the master at Obi, followed him from Hyuga to the capital. The shared vocabulary is read first in the steel. The school forges an itame mixed with mokume that stands up, the grain raised into the loose, granular surface the commentaries name outright, the zanguri hada particular to Horikawa work, with ji-nie lying thick and chikei entering; on many blades a mizukage rises obliquely from the machi. Over that ground the prime manner is the Keicho-shinto sugata, wide with little taper and an extended chu-kissaki or o-kissaki, the build likened to a Nanbokucho odachi cut down, tempered in a notare and gunome with thick nie, sunagashi and long kinsuji, the nioiguchi often sinking into shizumi. Within that frame the pupils diverge sharply.
Kunimichi runs the flamboyant Shizu copy fully out and turns his boshi pointed in the Mishina manner, the Sanpin boshi the school otherwise does not show. Masahiro keeps the same Soshu-den worked at lower temperature, his temper calm and his mokume conspicuous; Kuniyasu and Kunitsugu stand closest of all to the master and signed for him. Kunitomo turns alone toward late Seki, his gunome round-headed and his chisel the finest in the group, and the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke carry the zanguri steel south into Osaka, the latter keeping the Ishido clove he was born to. Hiroyuki holds suguha over a blackish steel that recalls old Yamato, and the two Echizen Kunikiyo forge a dark, dense hokkoku-gane under a calm chu-suguha. A collector seeks Horikawa because the school stands at a hinge: Kunihiro is read as the first hand of the new-sword age, and the line he taught runs forward into the Osaka tradition through Kunisada and Kunisuke and into Echizen through Kunikiyo. To kantei the work, read the steel first, the standing zanguri surface and the oblique mizukage, then the sinking nioiguchi and the Soshu-revival notare with its sunagashi and kinsuji; the individual hand declares itself in the departures, Kunimichi's pointed boshi, Kunitomo's Seki gunome and compact tang, Kuniyasu's reversed file marks and two-character mei, Hiroyuki's kiri-yasuri. The founder and his closest pupils sit at the top of the line, Kunihiro signing almost everything he made, the large kata-ochi two-character mei beside his long residence signatures; because Kuniyasu, Masahiro, Kunitsugu and Hiromi worked as his daisaku, a share of the blades signed Kunihiro are in fact theirs. Provenance runs through the houses of the founder's own story and of the country, the Hyuga Ito he had served, the Shimazu of Kagoshima, the Imperial Family and Toyotomi Hideyori, with the tachi Kunihiro dedicated to the Hataeda Hachimangu still in the shrine's keeping. A signed Horikawa blade reaches a private collection only from time to time, carrying on its nakago the hand with which the new sword begins. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunihiro國廣 | 1573-1613 | 148 |
| Kunimichi國路 | 1615-1624 | 74 |
| Kunisada國貞 | 1624-1646 | 88 |
| Masahiro正弘 | 1596-1615 | 14 |
| Kunitomo國儔 | 1596-1615 | 27 |
Kyōto: the revival workshop
The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
This work carries older NBTHK “Kichō”-era papers, which the NBTHK no longer issues and now regards as unreliable. To confirm the attribution, submission to an official Japanese examination body (such as the NBTHK or NTHK) for modern certification could be considered.
For returns due to customer circumstances, the cost is the customer's responsibility. For returns due to our mis-shipment or a defective item, we bear the cost.
Here it is, it has arrived! A masterpiece that was originally a 2-shaku 7-sun katana likely bearing the mei of Horikawa Kunihiro, which became mumei after being unhesitatingly shortened in later generations. Because of this, the kiwame was lowered by one grade and attributed to his younger brother, Kuniyasu. According to the *Kunihiro Taikan*, there are fewer than 20 extant works by Kuniyasu, and among them, 1 is designated as Juyo Bunkazai, 5 as Juyo Bijutsuhin, and 12 as Juyo Token; they are all recognized as masterpieces. While Horikawa Kunihiro is immensely famous as the founder of Shinto, the works of his younger brother and daisaku-sha, Horikawa Kuniyasu, are few in number and are referred to as phantom masterpieces. Kuniyasu was the youngest brother of Horikawa Kunihiro. There is an anecdote that Kuniyasu’s swords were so skillfully made that his brother Kunihiro appealed to their lord, claiming Kuniyasu had forged a fake Masamune; Kuniyasu was subsequently placed in the custody of the Torii family—a story that proves just how great Kuniyasu’s skill was. However, the reality is that he was scouted and became the kakae-kaji (retained smith) for the Torii family. Most of Kuniyasu’s sword works bear the mei of his older brother, Horikawa Kunihiro. This katana has a Keicho Shinto sugata, with little difference between the moto-mihaba and saki-mihaba, a shallow sori, and an extended kissaki. The jigane is a zanguri-style itame-hada known as "Horikawa-hada," and the ji is well-covered in ji-nie. The hamon is a notare-midare mixed with gunome, aiming for the style of Shizu Saburo Kaneuji, with deep nie and nioi. Sunagashi is present, kinsuji appears, and with the addition of tobiyaki, it is forged with a wild and ambitious ha. It is a magnificent sword aiming for the style of Kaneuji, who is famous as a Soshu high-ranking smith and disciple of Masamune. The luxurious koshirae adds further splendor to this sword, which was lowered one grade from Horikawa Kunihiro due to being mumei and given the kiwame of his brother Kuniyasu. Since ancient times, works of the Horikawa school have been few and treated as precious items; please truly enjoy this masterpiece.
NihontoWatchmumei · Edo · nagasa 70.7cm · sori 1.6cm
Horikawa (Yamashiro / Kyoto) · Yamashiro · around 1596-1615
Fujishiro Jo-jo saku · Tōken Taikan top 11%
1 piece on the market now
Horikawa Kuniyasu signed only the two characters of his name, never a court title, and within the whole Horikawa school he alone cut his file marks in reverse. These two habits, more than any single feature of forging or temper, are how the published sources tell him apart. The Tanaka genealogy gives his common name as Saburōdayū and records that he was the youngest brother of Horikawa Kunihiro; other sword books make him instead a nephew, originally from Obi in Hyūga, who admired Kunihiro, traveled up to Kyoto, entered his gate and there matured. He worked in the Keichō years, at the opening of the shintō age, and his record is one of the closest in the school to its founder.
The published sources return again and again to a single explanation for how few of his signed blades survive. His manner of forging, the construction of his tang, and the cut of his signature so closely resemble Kunihiro's that he is thought to have served as one of his daisaku, the substitute hand producing work under the master's name. The first-session Jūyō commentary puts it plainly: among signed blades that survive, those bearing Kunihiro's own signature yet judged on appraisal to be wholly Kuniyasu's hand are not few. He is, in effect, the daisaku whose work stands closest of all to Kunihiro's, and the small body of pieces signed Kuniyasu is what remains once the blades that went out under his brother's name are set aside.
His characteristic hand copies the higher Sōshū masters, and within them the Naoe-Shizu manner above all, what the commentaries call 「彼が最も得意とした志津風の作域」[[c:1]], the Shizu-style range in which he most excelled. The jigane is the constant. Over a board-grain itame mixed with mokume, and at times ō-itame, the grain stands up into a coarse, dry texture the published sources name the most conspicuously standing zanguri in the whole Horikawa group and a distinctive trait of this smith; fine ji-nie sets densely and rather thickly, chikei enter well, and on several blades a diagonal mizukage rises from below the machi. The carvings run to the devotional, futasuji-hi with bonji, rendai and kuwagata, suken, gomabashi and kurikara, executed in relief and harmonizing with the wide, forceful Keichō shape.
Over that jigane he tempers a shallow, large notare into which gunome, ko-gunome and angular, squared-off elements gather, ashi entering, the nioi deep and the nie thick. The nie is the point the published sources name as his recognition: at times it coarsens and gathers in uneven clusters, hotsure breaks along the edge, sunagashi runs broadly, long kinsuji enter, and small yubashiri and tobiyaki are mixed in, while the nioiguchi inclines to shizumi, a subdued, slightly sunken line the commentaries read as a mark of this group. The boshi enters in notare or midare and turns back in ko-maru or yakizume with vigorous hakikake. Against this bold, rustic prime stands a rare second register: on one Jūyō wakizashi he tempers instead a chū-suguha with places of shallow, small notare, the nie not coarsened as usual but composed quietly in ko-nie. The published sources call examples of his suguha rare, judge this one finished with consummate skill, and liken it to 「同派の平安城弘幸を想わせる」[[c:2]], the work of Heianjō Hiroyuki of the same line.
What singles him out in the school is not chiefly his style, which is by design close to his master's, but two technical habits the commentaries name as his great points of connoisseurship. He signs only the two characters Kuniyasu and never took a court title, 「銘字は必ず二字銘にきり, 受領銘はない」[[c:3]], the only one among the superior Horikawa smiths to receive no juryō. And alone in the school he cuts his file marks reverse, 「一門中, 鑢目が逆筋違」[[c:4]], said to be because he was left-handed, a feature the published sources note does not appear on the blades signed Kunihiro. The same commentaries connect his two-character work in both style and signature to Kunitsugu, transmitted as his elder brother, and observe that within the Horikawa group no one but Kuniyasu produced the kiriha-built Sadamune-style copies seen among his work. From the manner of his forging and temper they read him as one who took the orbit of Sadamune for his model, 「おそらく国広の代作に任じていたためと思われる」[[c:5]], and so served the master's name with his own hand.
For the collector he is a rare and rewarding name. Fujishiro grades him Jō-jō saku. He has no National Treasures; his record runs instead through one Important Cultural Property, a katana held in the Tokyo National Museum, a wakizashi at the Tokubetsu-Jūyō rank, a prewar Jūyō-Bijutsuhin katana once owned by Jinbei Kashiwara of Osaka, and some fourteen Jūyō blades, one of them transmitted in the Shimazu family, lords of the Kagoshima domain. The published sources call his finest pieces masterworks that bear comparison with Kunihiro's own, one first-session blade praised as 「国広の傑作に比肩する出来映えで, 同作中傑出した一口である」[[c:6]], comparable in quality to Kunihiro's masterworks and outstanding among Kuniyasu's oeuvre. Because so few signed works exist, and because most designated blades are long held rather than traded, a signed Kuniyasu comes to light only seldom; a privately held example is a notable thing for a collector to encounter, and it carries the added interest of a hand that, in the world at large, is hidden inside the signed work of Kunihiro himself.
Where Kuniyasu stands among comparable artisans: across all of nihontō, and within tradition, era, and period. The tiers (Foremost · Leading · Major · Notable) weigh official designations from the NBTHK and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with historical honors of lasting repute such as the Sansaku and Meibutsu-chō.
Select a lens to see how it's measured.
Shinto · Yamashiro
79 pieces on the market now
At Ichijo Horikawa in Kyoto, from Keicho 4 (1599), Horikawa Kunihiro gathered the pupils whose work the published sources name with his own as the opening of the shinto age. Kunihiro himself reached forging late and by a roundabout road. Born Tanaka and serving as a warrior under the Ito of Obi castle in Hyuga, he wandered the provinces after that house fell, forging where he stopped, his earliest dated blade cut in Hyuga in Tensho 4 (1576); his itinerant Tensho-uchi looked to late Soshu and late Seki, often run toward a hitatsura-like effect over devotional carving. The settlement in Kyoto changed that. There his stated aim, the sources write, lay in the revival of the Soshu-den tradition, the leaning strongest toward Shizu, and around that ideal he trained the men who carried his manner forward: Dewa no Kami Kunimichi, Kuniyasu, Osumi no Jo Masahiro, Echigo no Kami Kunitomo, the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke, with later and minor hands reaching Settsu, Echizen and Edo. Many of them, born like the master at Obi, followed him from Hyuga to the capital. The shared vocabulary is read first in the steel. The school forges an itame mixed with mokume that stands up, the grain raised into the loose, granular surface the commentaries name outright, the zanguri hada particular to Horikawa work, with ji-nie lying thick and chikei entering; on many blades a mizukage rises obliquely from the machi. Over that ground the prime manner is the Keicho-shinto sugata, wide with little taper and an extended chu-kissaki or o-kissaki, the build likened to a Nanbokucho odachi cut down, tempered in a notare and gunome with thick nie, sunagashi and long kinsuji, the nioiguchi often sinking into shizumi. Within that frame the pupils diverge sharply.
Kunimichi runs the flamboyant Shizu copy fully out and turns his boshi pointed in the Mishina manner, the Sanpin boshi the school otherwise does not show. Masahiro keeps the same Soshu-den worked at lower temperature, his temper calm and his mokume conspicuous; Kuniyasu and Kunitsugu stand closest of all to the master and signed for him. Kunitomo turns alone toward late Seki, his gunome round-headed and his chisel the finest in the group, and the elder Kunisada and Kunisuke carry the zanguri steel south into Osaka, the latter keeping the Ishido clove he was born to. Hiroyuki holds suguha over a blackish steel that recalls old Yamato, and the two Echizen Kunikiyo forge a dark, dense hokkoku-gane under a calm chu-suguha. A collector seeks Horikawa because the school stands at a hinge: Kunihiro is read as the first hand of the new-sword age, and the line he taught runs forward into the Osaka tradition through Kunisada and Kunisuke and into Echizen through Kunikiyo. To kantei the work, read the steel first, the standing zanguri surface and the oblique mizukage, then the sinking nioiguchi and the Soshu-revival notare with its sunagashi and kinsuji; the individual hand declares itself in the departures, Kunimichi's pointed boshi, Kunitomo's Seki gunome and compact tang, Kuniyasu's reversed file marks and two-character mei, Hiroyuki's kiri-yasuri. The founder and his closest pupils sit at the top of the line, Kunihiro signing almost everything he made, the large kata-ochi two-character mei beside his long residence signatures; because Kuniyasu, Masahiro, Kunitsugu and Hiromi worked as his daisaku, a share of the blades signed Kunihiro are in fact theirs. Provenance runs through the houses of the founder's own story and of the country, the Hyuga Ito he had served, the Shimazu of Kagoshima, the Imperial Family and Toyotomi Hideyori, with the tachi Kunihiro dedicated to the Hataeda Hachimangu still in the shrine's keeping. A signed Horikawa blade reaches a private collection only from time to time, carrying on its nakago the hand with which the new sword begins. Learn more →
| Smith | Era | Designated |
|---|---|---|
| Kunihiro國廣 | 1573-1613 | 148 |
| Kunimichi國路 | 1615-1624 | 74 |
| Kunisada國貞 | 1624-1646 | 88 |
| Masahiro正弘 | 1596-1615 | 14 |
| Kunitomo國儔 | 1596-1615 | 27 |
Kyōto: the revival workshop
The Shintō era was largely invented in Kyōto: Umetada Myōju’s workshop trained the movement, Horikawa Kunihiro raised a generation, and the Hon’ami appraisers, who held no forge, governed the meaning of famous blades.
This work carries older NBTHK “Kichō”-era papers, which the NBTHK no longer issues and now regards as unreliable. To confirm the attribution, submission to an official Japanese examination body (such as the NBTHK or NTHK) for modern certification could be considered.
For returns due to customer circumstances, the cost is the customer's responsibility. For returns due to our mis-shipment or a defective item, we bear the cost.
